Breakfast At The Breece D\u27J International House Of Pancake

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. It was cool and dim inside the restaurant despite the sun that came in through the east windows. The hostess\u27 greeting was equally cool. Anne remembered, as she followed Barb and the hostess to the table, the time her father had said he would never return to Canada because there was too much English influence and the people were unfriendly. They were seated at a table for two along the wall opposite the windows, between an Oriental couple and an American man and woman with their two little girls

The Monetary Impact of Outpatient No-Shows in the Nuclear Medicine Department of a Pediatric Hospital

poster abstractOutpatient no-shows are going to be a regular occurrence for any nuclear medicine department. Hospitals lose thousands of dollars each year from non-attendance. Determining the overall monetary impact of the no-shows and uncovering which procedures contribute most in terms total no-shows and total financial impact is a first step in alleviating some of this loss. Method: From a Nuclear Medicine children’s hospital, six months of data were collected retrospectively from December 2012 through May 2013. This included: procedure, current procedural terminology codes, total number of scans, total number of no-shows, as well as total hospital cost, and total revenue lost. The percentage for each procedure contributing to the total financial impact was calculated by dividing the cost for each procedure by the total loss in revenue. This was done for the total hospital cost (radiopharmaceuticals) and the total revenue loss (technical component). Results: From December 2012 through May 2013 the financial impact for this nuclear medicine department was $17,512.32. The procedures contributing to the most hospital cost were renal dynamic imaging, renal morphology imaging, and gastric emptying, resulting in 54%, 19.2%, 13.4% respectively. The procedures contributing to the most revenue loss were gastric emptying, renal dynamic imaging, and hepatobiliary imaging, resulting in 30.7%, 17.0%, and 13.4% respectively. Conclusion: Outpatient no-shows are going to be a regular occurrence for any nuclear medicine department, but losing money does not have to be. Nuclear medicine departments need to discover ways of eliminating no-shows and identify which procedures contribute to the most financial impact. This is imperative in reducing the amount of revenue lost from wasted radiopharmaceuticals, technologist’s time, and the technical components in a department

Arrangement

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. As I changed my clothes, I felt as if I shouldn\u27t be in her bedroom when she wasn\u27t home, but I looked around, feeling slightly guilty as I stepped into my jeans. The room was neat, almost barren compared to my rooms, at home and at school, that were filled with overflowing bookcases and chairs covered with new pairs of jeans I had never hemmed and stuffed animals given to me by my mother and my first lover. Her room was so uncluttered it seemed almost pristine, despite the copy of The Joy of Cooking and the black wool wrap that lay on the bed. Her other books stood in a small bookcase opposite the bed - a set of Time-Life volumes on various geographic areas of the United States, a book on tropical fish, Betty Friedan . I told myself it was none of my business and returned my attention to dressing, but before I pulled my sweatshirt over my head, I noticed the two shelves of small clown and harlequin figurines hanging on the wall over the bed. It looked like a child\u27s collection, but sitting in the corner next to the bookcase was the clown\u27s big brother: a Pierrot doll about two feet tall, with a smooth, white, half-smiling porcelain face, dressed in a black-and-white satin costume

Longitudinal Effects of Prenatal Teratogen Exposure on Executive Function and Academic Outcomes

The healthy development of executive function in adolescents is essential for controlling attention and behavior, especially as children confront the challenges associated with puberty, social situations, parental pressures, academic pursuits, and the transition to adulthood. For children prenatally exposed to teratogenic substances (i.e., certain prescription medications, maternal infections or conditions, alcohol, tobacco, etc.), higher-order cognitive skills may be compromised, resulting in an increased risk of delayed developmental functioning, deficits in cognitive and executive functioning, and poorer academic outcomes. Research findings suggest that even low-to-moderate levels of alcohol and/or tobacco use during pregnancy are associated with poorer academic performance, lower IQ scores, and reduced performance on various cognitive tasks. This more common, yet less understood and under-reported, low-to-moderate level of substance use is an area of growing concern. To that end, using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD, 2021), this dissertation explored the association between low-to-moderate prenatal alcohol and/or tobacco exposure and adolescents’ subsequent executive function and academic performance at two separate time points in their development. The study examined whether prenatal teratogen exposure (i.e., parent-reported alcohol and/or tobacco use) was associated with negative effects on adolescents’ performance on various executive function tasks from the NIH Toolbox-Cognition Battery and/or their average grades in school. Furthermore, given that executive function has not been consistently defined within the psychological literature, with the field of developmental psychology defining executive function more broadly (i.e., cognitive flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control; see Diamond, 2013; Zelazo, 2015) and cognitive psychology defining executive function more narrowly (i.e., viewing working memory as a higher-level, superordinate construct that is separate from executive function; see Conway & Engle, 1994; Conway et al., 2021), this study also examined executive function from these competing perspectives. Additionally, the study used a longitudinal approach to explore the role of timing in any associations between teratogen exposure and cognitive outcomes, analyzing data from two separate collection periods: baseline and 2-year follow-up. The overarching hypothesis was that low-to-moderate prenatal substance exposure would be associated with reduced executive function task performance and reduced average grades at both baseline and the 2-year follow-up, with a greater reduction in executive function task performance in the broadly defined models of executive function (relative to the narrowly defined models of executive function). Three separate studies, distinguished by types of prenatal exposure (i.e., Study 1: alcohol, Study 2: tobacco, or Study 3: combined alcohol AND tobacco), explored this overarching prediction using path analyses. For Studies 1 (alcohol) and 2 (tobacco), these hypotheses were not supported; no significant relationships were detected between low-to-moderate prenatal alcohol or tobacco exposure and either executive function or average grades. In contrast, the results of Study 3 (combined alcohol AND tobacco) presented mixed findings in terms of supporting the hypothesis. Prior to controlling for demographic variables, prenatal combined exposure was negatively associated with the broad definition of executive function at baseline and with average grades at the 2-year follow-up. These findings suggest that prenatal exposure to both alcohol AND tobacco had a small, but significant negative effect on both academic outcomes and executive function when broadly defined. An important aspect of this study explored executive function from two theoretical perspectives (i.e., developmental versus cognitive psychology). Analyses from these two perspectives yielded a recurring finding related to the importance of working memory, specifically as an effective predictor of academic performance. By deconstructing executive function, this study offers a novel approach to exploring the cognitive abilities measured in the ABCD Study and has provided new insights into the connection between working memory, executive function, academic performance, and prenatal teratogen exposure

Opportunities for communication in integrated settings: young deaf children

The integration of deaf children into mainstream schools was heralded by the 1981 Education Act, but has been dogged by conflict about the appropriateness of two dominant approaches to communication. The oral/aural approach, most often followed, is concerned with teaching deaf children to learn to listen and listen to learn. The emphasis has been on the need to 'normalize' deaf children in order to promote their learning and development. The manual/visual approach has focused on sign usage to promote a child's development as a communicator and learner and can be tailored to the child's prospective membership of Deaf/deaf and hearing cultures. The aim of this study is to explore both the oral/aural and the manual/visual approach in relation to young deaf children's experiences of integration. Rather than focusing on modality specific aspects of communication, this study examines the wide range of both resources and strategies deaf children have for interaction in a variety of educational environments, using modality independent tools. This permits a broader examination of deaf children's opportunities for communication in integrated settings than has previously been undertaken. The research involved detailed analysis of direct observation data collected in nursery and reception classes over a period of eighteen months, during which time the experiences of a group of deaf children and matched hearing peers were compared and contrasted. It is argued that the preoccupations of professionals, and their purposes in promoting particular approaches to language and communication need to be challenged if deaf children are not to be disabled by oppressive practices in the name of integration. It is recommended that further research should aim to advance inclusive and empowering education for deaf children through more adequately recognizing the contribution of Deaf/deaf people to processes of enquiry

Improving understanding of service user involvement and identity: Disabled people bringing ourselves out of the half-shadows

We are a group of disabled service users ‘whose experiences are semi-visible or semi-acknowledged within normative discourses’. We have conducted research with other disabled service users to circumvent challenges of research co-production and facilitate inclusion in research of ourselves and our disabled peers who are frequently described as ‘hard to reach’. We carried out this research in order to enhance our own visibility as researchers and bring our experience as disabled service-user representatives out of the ‘half shadows’. In doing this we hoped to expand awareness of the dynamics at play in service user-representation. This research arose directly out of the concerns of the late Patricia Chambers, a disabled woman who expressed deep concern about how her experience as a service user –representative was routinely rendered semi-visible or semi-acknowledged within normative discourses. It begins to explore the extent of our rendition to the half-shadows and to work out strategies for bringing our experience in to the light

Health Educators in Florida’s County Public Health Departments: Frequency of and Perceived Confidence in Performing Entry-Level Competencies

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the activities of health educators in Florida’s county health departments concur with the responsibilities and competencies for health educators that have been established by the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC, 2003). Fifty-three (68.8%) county public health department health educators completed a modified version of the Self-Assessment for the Health Education Specialist instrument (National Task Force, 1987) to determine the frequency and perceived confidence in performing entry-level health educator responsibilities. The data indicated that the entry-level responsibilities reflect the current health education practice in this group of health educators. The responsibility areas of planning and implementing health programs received the highest mean scores for frequency of performance (M=3.98, SD=0.66; M=3.88, SD=0.89, respectively) and perceived confidence level (M=4.13, SD=0.75; M=4.14, SD=0.90, respectively), whereas communicating and evaluating received the lowest mean scores for frequency (M=3.46, SD=0.94; M=3.49, SD=1.08, respectively) and perceived confidence level (M=3.86, SD=0.84; M=3.61, SD=1.11, respectively). A statistically significant positive correlation (

Improving Understanding of Service User Involvement and Identity: A Report of Research Findings

This report aims to improve understanding of good and bad experiences of service user involvement in the commissioning, design, delivery and evaluation of public sector services and the challenges faced by service users in negotiating their dual role of both being a service user representative and recipients of services. This report will be of interest to Disabled people who are service users and for people who design, manage and evaluate services in the public sector. This was a user-led piece of research designed and carried out by Disabled researchers. It arose directly out of a Disabled person’s own concern and was undertaken by a Disabled People’s Organisation